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  “Hey!” George shouted, stumbling off the ladder. “What’s this about?”

  Cocoa eyes and a burnished face turned to him and called in clipped Trinidad English, adding a West Indies spice to the dull deck. “Commander! Lieutenant Francis Drake Reed reporting for assault and battery! Kiss the stars at your timely arrival! Tell these walking rocks that my father was a priest and I never cheat!”

  George waved at the mechanics and barked, “Back off, you animals. He’s under my command.”

  The mechanics were bigger than any four of George, but obviously weren’t used to being ordered around by a Starfleet officer.

  George snapped at his subordinate and said, “Trouble. Fall in.”

  “But I’ve—”

  “I said trouble! Jimmy’s gone!”

  “Cow poo. Where can he go on a flying garage?”

  “That’s what scares me!”

  Drake Reed dropped a bow at the two mechanics he’d just fleeced and started to make an exit statement.

  “Pardon, all the thunderclap and shivaree, but duty caaaa—”

  And choked when George grabbed him by the collar and hauled him down that ladder.

  In seconds they were clattering between decks.

  “I told you it’d take two of us to watch that kid!” George blustered. “Why didn’t you meet us at the embarkation port?”

  “I didn’t even know you were on board yet,” Drake protested. “A witch doctor, am I? Brain juju? I can see through walls?”

  “And I told you not to run any games while you’ve got your uniform on. All I need is a complaint from the dock superintendent against my own lieutenant for gambling on duty. What’s the matter with you? They could yank this tractor’s dock warrants for that! Do you know what a mess it is to try to get your license out from under a complaint? Every person on board can be waylaid indefinitely! Climb faster, will you?”

  “I am a gentleman, not a lizard. Where could the unripe lambkin be?”

  “I’ve got a hunch he’s trying to get off the stratotractor while we’re still in the spacedock area.”

  “Hunch away. I shall follow.”

  They dropped onto the messy shipment deck, and George gave his assistant a push through crated parts and structural segments.

  “Check the removable airlocks! I’ll check the workbees!”

  “Right.” Drake started away, then spun around. “What on a spice rack could he do in a removable airlock? They’re only used for transfer of pressure-sensitive cargo, yes?”

  “Don’t underestimate that snot. If it leaves the ship, he could be in it.”

  “But they have no thrusters!”

  “Go!”

  George waved him off with a frantic thrash and ran in the other direction, toward the row of four one-man work pods that commonly peppered space around docked vessels. Ugly with claws, magnets, antigravs, and hooks, the acorn-shaped bees could attach to almost any section of any kind of ship or dock section while the man inside did mechanical or electrical repairs. Otherwise, the bees were pretty low-tech. So small they were nicknamed potatoes and their bays were called pantries, they couldn’t get far on their own.

  Barely far enough for a boy to blow away from a stratotractor. After that—a very hard landing.

  Crossing with some difficulty into each pantry and checking the old-style hatches that took a workman’s badge code to get open, George satisfied himself that two of the bees’ hatches hadn’t been tampered with.

  The third one, though, was locked from inside.

  He yanked his markline spike from its sheath on his holster and hammered the blunt end on the hatch.

  “Jimmy! Open up! Open up, goddammit!”

  There was no response from inside, but the on-line lights were blinking on the external skin of the workbee. It was preparing to jump.

  “Drake! Drake, over here!” he shouted, and poked hopelessly at the outer control panels. Nothing worked.

  He started to shout again, then heard Drake’s boots thudding on the deck behind him, and kept his attention on the hatch.

  Risking detachment of the workbee with a ruptured seal, George turned his markline spike to the pointy end and started prying at the flexible seals around the airlock hatch. All the fancy, flashy weapons in the galaxy couldn’t match a simple eight-inch pointed steel spike at moments like this. If he could just rupture the seal enough—before the workbee jumped free of its cowls—the safety system would take over and the big metal things holding the workbee wouldn’t detach it.

  Just enough—

  Hshshshshshs

  “Got it!”

  When the airlock seal suddenly hissed, both Security men felt the rush of jackpot and alarm that comes only at moments of truth. As the hatch gave against his shoulder, George’s instincts and training took over and his Fleet-issue laser pistol swept out of its holster and into his hands as though it had a life of its own.

  He plunged in, locked both legs, fell into aim-and-fire posture, and shouted, “Hold it!”

  “George!” Drake blared.

  Instantly George yanked up the barrel, stumbled, and gasped, “Jesus, what am I doing!”

  He and Drake gawked at each other. Could have been funny. Should have been.

  Then they both looked again into the workbee’s pilot cubby.

  There, not quite filling the man-size shell, cooking with resentments, plots, and plans, Jimmy Kirk was ready to make his escape. He seemed more disgusted than embarrassed at having been caught, and he didn’t move or attempt to cover up what he’d been doing. Maybe he was even proud of it.

  Amber eyes that had once gazed at George in adoration and respect now burned with thankless acrimony—and it took some of the red out of George’s hair to see it.

  The boy was dry ice.

  “You’re pulling a weapon,” he said, “on your own son.”

  Jimmy’s bulky, muscular body never flinched as he glared at his father. Still half-hidden between the touring cap and the raised collar of his high school jacket, his eyes showed belief in his own sentiments. He had moved forward on his decisions with all the force of a teenager, and apparently he had no concern that his judgment might be bad or his course off.

  He remained silent, pillorying his father with a full load of mean-mindedness.

  Knowing when to keep his clapper tongue quiet, Drake Reed cautiously reached out and removed the laser pistol from his superior officer’s hand.

  His chest withering, George stared at his son and held out his bare palm.

  “Jimmy, I . . . I’m sorry . . . ”

  Brooding, letting his victory burn, Jimmy refused to show his father the slightest sympathy.

  Seconds ticked by without relief, until he finally said, “Didn’t know the word was in your rule book.”

  George jabbed a finger at the boy’s face.

  “Look, you retract your bristles, bud! What were you thinking anyway? These potatoes aren’t toys! There are a lot of ways to die in space, but the worst one is to die of stupidity. You can’t get around the security on this thing. The jump codes are—”

  ENABLED ENABLED ENABLED

  “How’d you do that? I’m in Security and I couldn’t break this security!”

  The boy got up slowly.

  “Too bad,” he said.

  He stepped past, barely brushing his father with a very cold shoulder, and got out of the workbee.

  George sagged against the curved interior shell, touched a hand to his head, and groaned, “He’s gonna be a criminal . . . ”

  Drake clapped him on the back. “Buck up, George. He can take my place as a Starfleet legend.”

  He left George near the hatch and moved into the cubby to shut the potato down and buzz for a repair crew before anything went wrong.

  At least, that was his cover. George knew Drake was really giving him time to go out there and handle his son alone.

  Not just time, but a push.

  He swallowed a couple of hard lumps, then stepped o
ut onto the deck, feeling as though he had a butt full of duckshot.

  As far down the cluttered deck as could be, Jimmy had retreated to a coffin-size niche between two big cargo-antigravs. There, he was waiting.

  George approached without theatrics, and stood just out of the niche.

  In the mirror of Jimmy’s expression, George’s hopes saw themselves and shivered. The resistance was palpable.

  “Life’s just one giant setback to you, isn’t it?” he asked.

  The boy looked away from him, shoulders down, a foot braced casually on one antigrav’s trunk.

  “You knew which bricks to pull out,” George began again. “You’d have breached the couplings and gone off in the potato without anybody knowing you were out there, without following any pattern, without announcing your presence in the maintenance channels—if you even got out of the pantry alive. You could’ve killed yourself detaching that piece of junk the wrong way. Or you could’ve killed somebody else if the pressurizing went wrong in here. You could’ve killed Drake or me.”

  He paused, searching for reaction. There was absolutely none.

  “Do you even care about that?” George added.

  Jimmy folded his arms morbidly. He seemed proud that he had used neither hindsight nor foresight, and remained deaf to reason.

  “You know what my dad always says,” he answered. “‘In space, you take your chances.’”

  He stalked farther into the niche, like walking rocket fuel.

  “Maybe you can help me a little here,” George said. “What’ll work with you?”

  Jimmy’s cheek was barely visible as he tossed a response over his shoulder.

  “How about raising the side of my crib?”

  “Y’know, there’s a lot to see in space if you’d just unclench your tight ass and open your eyes!” George struggled.

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  “How old do you figure sixteen is? Wait till you hit twenty. In the Academy they give you tests you can’t even win!”

  The boy turned, scowled at him, and refused to be impressed. “Any game can be won.”

  “Oh, is that right? How’ll you ever know if you can’t even get past the entrance exam?”

  “I could get into Starfleet’s monkey farm if I wanted to. Who says I couldn’t?”

  “Your grades, that’s who.” George pointed back at the workbee. “Why don’t you put some of those smarts into your schoolwork? You mother enrolled you in the pre-Academy program so you’d have a little direction, not so you’d have a reason to go become some half-cocked vagabond on Earth. You mother and I have always tried not to compare you to Sam, but—”

  “What do you know about how things are on Earth?” the boy challenged. “What do you know about Mom and Sam? We’ve gotten along just fine without you. Our names aren’t in your Fleet manual.”

  George flopped his arms at his sides. “So you’re just going to sneak back to Riverside and follow that pack of delinquents around until you hatchet your life. Good plan.”

  “Guess I better spend my life dodging black holes and pretending aliens don’t smell. Thanks for the advice.”

  The tone was completely composed, even dry. There wasn’t even the satisfaction of scorn for George to cling to.

  He stepped back, giving Jimmy room to not get close. “All right, come out of there. Captain April’s waiting to see you. That’s how it is, you know, when you come on board a ship, you report to your commanding officer.”

  “So now he’s captain of a station tractor?” the boy commented as he moved with damning slowness toward his father. “Thought he’d be doing better by now.”

  “These things don’t have captains, and you know it,” George said. “Now, move. We’re going to show you what he is captain of.”

  FIVE

  “Jimmy, hello! Why, you look as if you’ve lost your dog.”

  Captain April spread his arms in welcome as George pushed his son out of the lift.

  Jimmy Kirk wagged a hand but refused to speak. Before him, framed by struts and strings of lights outside—were those part of the spacedock?—Robert April gazed at him with complete understanding and tolerance, and the last thing Jimmy wanted right now was to be understood or tolerated.

  A shove between his shoulder blades told him he wasn’t moving fast enough.

  He stepped down to the foredeck, putting space between himself and his father.

  Captain April was already gesturing him forward. “Take a look at the moored vessels, Jimmy. And the service docks. It’s all quite stirring in its labyrinthan way.”

  Bitter refusals popped into Jimmy’s head while he was trying to envision whatever labyrinthan meant, but he couldn’t push out any cracks as Captain April gathered him toward the wide, curved viewportal.

  Jimmy was stiff, but he couldn’t help seeing. If he turned around, all he’d see was his father.

  Out there, in geo-somethingerother orbit over Africa, was a tangle of spacedockage whose organization wasn’t immediately clear.

  “Looks like a girder factory puked,” he said.

  “Yes, doesn’t it?” the captain said with a grin. “All around here are merchant ships in for repairs or refits. They’ll go a few at a time into the structural docks . . . and that bunch of angular things is the LBR complex for spacefaring vehicles not carrying passengers. Loading, building, repair. Isn’t it pretty in its industrial way?”

  The strings of docklights were garish, but the dock girders themselves didn’t catch any light, not even the sunlight, and had probably been painted with low-reflective paint to keep unexpected flashes from being mistaken for docking lights or buoys.

  At least, that’s what I would do, Jimmy thought, and mentally retreated for a moment to imagine building a thing like this if he had to.

  Rather than going around the skeleton of red and blue girders, the stratotractor plodded right through the center, apparently having all its passage warrants in order. Jimmy had tried not to pay attention, but he’d picked up enough casual conversation to know that warrants and patterns were the only way to keep robotic vessels, or any kind of vessels, from knocking into one another and into the dock brackets.

  He cleared his throat and pressed his lips tight, annoyed with himself for having paid attention without meaning to.

  “These funny-looking beams have names,” the captain explained, pointing as he spoke. “They seem snarled up, but they’re not really. Those extra-long ones are longitudinal antigravity pontoons. They’re always in line with the longitudes on the planet’s surface—don’t ask me why. But the entire dockage can be dropped out of orbit and landed on the planet, or taken apart and pieces of it landed, with vessels inside. Doesn’t happen very often, but now and again it’s handy. Oh, look there. No, no, directly above us . . . crane your neck a bit—that curved area above us—see it?”

  “I see it.”

  “That’s called a head wall. The curved bows of most Federation-standard vessels fit right in there. See the slings and clews that hold a large ship in place on the cutting stage? And those over there are built-beams we call backbones. All these ships are being worked on in some capacity. You can see that each one is flashing a blue light directly between two red lights, vertical to the ship’s lines? Those are their not-under-command lights.”

  Still aware of his father standing silent behind them, Jimmy only grunted, determined to remain undazzled.

  As they passed through the metallic mess, stringed lights sprinkled their colors on Captain April’s face and made the smile lines crease around his eyes. He pointed at several vessels, all different shapes and sizes, which weren’t in the dock complex, but were floating free in space, tethered by umbilicals to orbiting tanks.

  “Those barges and clippers are in for resupply,” Captain April said. “That’s why they’re at external moorings. There’s no reason to take up dockspace with them. Most of these are merchantmen under contracts of affreightment with the Federation. The large ones are the cli
ppers. They’ll go from here to the DLO ports, which means ‘dispatch and loading only.’ The big ones carry bale cargo. That’s raw material that comes wrapped in bunches. Their holds are called bale capacity or bale cubic. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, great,” Jimmy chewed out of the corner of his mouth.

  “The smaller ones, the barges, usually carry bulk cargo,” April went on, “which is anything stored loose, not boxed, baled, crated, or casked. Flowing stuff, like liquid fuel, for instance, or even water for outposts. They can get their Bill of Entry directly from the dockmaster, along with certificates of registry, bond notes, warehousing tickets, and Bills of Lading, without having to set foot planetside. All the customs inspections, trade appraisals, and damage surveys can be done right here on the spot. It’s really all very smart and allows for what we call ‘customary dispatch.’ That’s the quick, lawful, and diligent loading and discharge of vessels.” He drew a long breath as though inhaling in a garden, then let it out slowly. “Ah, it still gives me a chill to see how well we carry on such things!”

  Jimmy bit the inside of his cheek to keep from reacting. Trying not to show on his face that half of that information had just flushed in one ear and out the other without stopping to check in, he suddenly felt very small. The trick of getting himself and five friends from Iowa to Oregon had seemed tough enough. Now it withered against the problems of moving a spaceship and cargo from here to there. Space had seemed drawing-board simple while he was sitting on Earth . . . bills of what? What kind of tickets? Surveys? Notes?

  Luckily, Captain April didn’t look at him, but instead was waving a hand appreciatively across their view.

  “All these are involved in what we call the coasting trade,” he added. “That’s moving cargo within the Federation of Planets, or to colonies settled by our member planets.”

  Jimmy tried to spit a “Who cares?” but couldn’t. If it had been anybody else talking to him—

  April’s hand curled over Jimmy’s shoulder.

  “And there,” the captain added proudly, “is Starbase One.”